..bo gra skończona. The writing on the wall:
Such a massive fall from grace. Someone on the internet, I forgot to note where, wrote how “in geological time it looks like a shot to the head”. A chillingly refreshing way of looking at it, but of little solace, because in our regular, non-geological time frame, the headshot needs its few decades to play out, breathtakingly biblical in scale and nature, lending itself to much metaphor.
Like had you heard about this Hindenburg? Click on its image up there ↑ to read its tale and learn about its fate. Or what with the mighty Titanic, appealing to our imagination ever since? And not that long ago the intentionally submersible, and not quite as mighty Titan, in so many slightly awkward ways hilariously imploding before reaching its destination.. “Oh the humanity” all over, yes, but in this case not too many tears were shed for (nor by) all the passengers.
The Fertile Crescent – surely you've heard of it, the cradle of our civilization – is no longer all that fertile, and paradise has long been lost (John Milton, 1667/276).
“Biblical” I wrote.. Indeed quite literally from the Bible's Book of Revelations we know The Four Horsemen — pestilence, war, famine, and death. However, someplace I read of The Four 🙌 Horsethemes of the Apocalypse. They being:
But then how to therein — no, no theremin, nor heroin 😔 — frame the nightmarish, ongoing collapse of 🇭🇹 Haiti, or the tragedies unfolding in 🇸🇩 Darfur, again/still. And 🇸🇾 Syria, and 🇵🇸 Israel, and all.. [4/8 addendum: I was confused & surprised to learn that even 🇨🇦 Canada, perceived beacon of many a good thing one might appreciate in their 1st world nation, apparently is set-up to break quickly when too much more shit hits the fan there.] [25/10 addendum: At the time of writing, I left Israel unlinked, because that conflict seemed ancient, well-known — stagnant misery hardly in need of links for clarity. Who could have foreseen the October 7th Hamas field trip that brought us ever more global rage.. 😐 No lack of powder in the kegs. On a sidenote more seriously, how could Jewish intelligence not have caught wind of such an operation. And does it matter.. ]
Always several and many boxes are to be ticked. Our stories may be accordingly complicated, but the endgame is closed. Yet the specifics of our own, personal dismal future and demise remain foggy. To be lived, if only because YOLO. And because there is still so much beauty all around at least us, the privileged. And because there may always be some unexpected reason for hope of some sort, still.
In 🎼 Chaos A.D., as record-breaking global temperatures casually 🦾 keep on breaking records, swaths of Canada keep on burning. TODO: pick a gloomily orange smoky picture of a US city skyline, it will last longer, and save a thousand words. 17/8 update: That was the beginning of July, and still chaos rules.. They've actually given up hope, and are literally waiting for the fires to just stop.
25/10 😐 update: Over two months later, the NYT draws up the balance. When it comes to walls of text, this page has long gotten out of control already, so I won't care and just c/p this poignant slab of text:
“Here is a list of countries that, all together, have a smaller carbon footprint than this year’s Canadian fires: 🇦🇫 Afghanistan, 🇦🇱 Albania, 🇦🇴 Angola, 🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda, 🇦🇲 Armenia, 🇦🇹 Austria, 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan, 🇧🇸 the Bahamas, 🇧🇭 Bahrain, 🇧🇧 Barbados, 🇧🇾 Belarus, 🇧🇿 Belize, 🇧🇯 Benin, 🇧🇹 Bhutan, 🇧🇴 Bolivia, 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 🇧🇼 Botswana, 🇧🇳 Brunei, 🇧🇬 Bulgaria, 🇧🇫 Burkina Faso, 🇧🇮 Burundi, 🇰🇭 Cambodia, 🇨🇲 Cameroon, 🇨🇻 Cape Verde, 🇨🇫 Central African Republic, 🇹🇩 Chad, 🇰🇲 Comoros, 🇨🇷 Costa Rica, 🇭🇷 Croatia, 🇨🇺 Cuba, 🇨🇾 Cyprus, the 🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of Congo, 🇩🇰 Denmark, 🇩🇯 Djibouti, 🇩🇲 Dominica, 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic, 🇹🇱 East Timor, 🇪🇨 Ecuador, 🇸🇻 El Salvador, 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea, 🇪🇷 Eritrea, 🇪🇪 Estonia, 🇸🇿 Estwatini, 🇪🇹 Ethiopia, 🇫🇯 Fiji, 🇫🇮 Finland, 🇬🇦 Gabon, 🇬🇲 Gambia, 🇬🇪 Georgia, 🇬🇭 Ghana, 🇬🇷 Greece, 🇬🇱 Greenland, 🇬🇩 Grenada, 🇬🇹 Guatemala, 🇬🇶 Guinea, 🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau, 🇬🇾 Guyana, 🇭🇹 Haiti, 🇭🇳 Honduras, 🇭🇺 Hungary, 🇮🇸 Iceland, 🇮🇪 Ireland, Israel, 🇨🇮 Ivory Coast, 🇯🇲 Jamaica, 🇯🇴 Jordan, 🇰🇪 Kenya, 🇰🇮 Kiribati, 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan, 🇱🇦 Laos, 🇱🇻 Latvia, 🇱🇧 Lebanon, 🇱🇸 Lesotho, 🇱🇷 Liberia, 🇱🇾 Libya, 🇱🇮 Liechtenstein, 🇱🇹 Lithuania, 🇱🇺 Luxembourg, 🇲🇬 Madagascar, 🇲🇼 Malawi, 🇲🇻 Maldives, 🇲🇱 Mali, 🇲🇹 Malta, 🇲🇷 Mauritania, 🇲🇺 Mauritius, 🇲🇩 Moldova, 🇲🇳 Mongolia, 🇲🇪 Montenegro, 🇲🇿 Mozambique, 🇳🇦 Namibia, 🇳🇵 Nepal, 🇳🇿 New Zealand, 🇳🇮 Nicaragua, 🇳🇪 Niger, 🇰🇵 North Korea, 🇲🇰 North Macedonia, 🇳🇴 Norway, 🇵🇼 Palau, 🇵🇦 Panama, 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea, 🇵🇾 Paraguay, 🇵🇪 Peru, 🇵🇹 Portugal, 🇨🇬 the Republic of Congo, 🇷🇼 Rwanda, 🇼🇸 Samoa, 🇸🇹 Sao Tome and Principe, 🇸🇳 Senegal, 🇷🇸 Serbia, 🇸🇨 Seychelles, 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone, 🇸🇬 Singapore, 🇸🇰 Slovakia, 🇸🇮 Slovenia, 🇸🇧 Solomon Islands, 🇸🇴 Somalia, 🇸🇸 South Sudan, 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka, 🇰🇳 St. Kitts and Nevis, 🇱🇨 St. Lucia, 🇻🇨 St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 🇸🇩 Sudan, 🇸🇷 Suriname, 🇸🇪 Sweden, 🇨🇭 Switzerland, 🇸🇾 Syria, 🇹🇯 Tajikistan, 🇹🇿 Tanzania, 🇹🇬 Togo, 🇹🇴 Tonga, 🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago, 🇺🇬 Uganda, 🇺🇾 Uruguay, 🇻🇺 Vanuatu, 🇪🇭 Western Sahara, 🇾🇪 Yemen, 🇿🇲 Zambia, and 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe.”
On July 8th, in cities around 🇨🇳 China, old air raid shelters had to come in handy to provide refuge from the heat. “Back into the caves we go!” 😏 On July 10th in the 🇺🇸 United States, following a deluge in Vermont, the otherwise most of the time excellent NYT prematurely proclaims the new normal may have arrived. At least the newly normal heat dome in the American Southwest seems to agree, as can tell us millions upon millions of Americans, among them the people of Phoenix, AZ, who have been wheezing at >110 °F (~43 °C) for well over two weeks now. 24/7 update: “They're playing "the floor is lava" for real in Arizona.” 🫠
Like Vermont, southwestern 🇯🇵 Japan is having the heaviest rain ever, says one Satoshi Sugimoto, and I don't see why he'd be spicing up his story.. El Niño be killing the coral. 😟 The plankton, too, is disappearing! 😐 A world with planktonless oceans.. I can't even begin to try and imagine/comprehend what that would, nay will entail, nor do I feel inclined right now to find a depressing link to tell me all about it. Reuters has data showing Antarctic sea ice levels have shrunk to an all-time low since satellite observations began. Cold comfort there are no polar bears there to flounder under, and then sink.
Det är en dag i morgon också.
On July 13th, heat maps turn black as land surface temperatures in 🇪🇸 Spain — more specifically parts of Extremadura, what being in a name — surpass an extremely balmy 60 °C (140 °F). It's the first time I heard a heatwave being named like a hurricane. Not even a likable name like say Tammy or Katrina – it's Cerberus, the hound of Hades. 😶 What's in a name, surely the person naming the wave must've pondered. Sixty degrees Celsius no less.. A sort-of heat index my brain intuitively rather ranks somewhere between doing the laundry and preparing a meal. Which is where I am now.
This all text needs many, many frills and fringes, but time is lacking. At least another, random picture for good measure:
It's not even a truly random picture though 😔 because JavaScript? PHP? Sweet Perl? Certainly no clumsy shell script. In these strange times I could ask an AI chatbot to decide for me, and then even spell out its advice while at it. For a human to proofread. No time.
On July 16th, a capricious atmospheric river apparently forebodes some serious flooding in the northeastern part of the US. A US internet denizen writes “I noticed this and shared it with my buddy earlier. We're both in Vermont. One thing I've noticed with the weather the past week is that it seems like it's hard to forecast. There's very little warning for some of this, or it's not as forecast” – which were my thoughts exactly yesterday, albeit in my happenstantially privileged comfy western European climate bubble of merely ominous winds, whimsical clouds, and erratic forecasts. And f* heat at times, but how on actual earth 🌍 could I dare complain about that.
Hm and oh, regarding famine/disease, what with H5N1, the bird flu. The bird is the word, and its flu could be ours. Seems like a matter of time, but then what all doesn't, and how would I know. Vox has us covered with 13 answered questions. And while conflict/war has always been raging in many parts of this our globe, the surreally anachronistic, like most all wars foolish war in 🇺🇦 Ukraine brought it closer to home and..
..the gates of 🇪🇺 Europe than it's been since.. I was going to bring up the war, briefly forgetting about the 1990's Balkans. 😒 Fuzzy Yugoslavian youth memories, NATO needing to be bombing Europe, Srebrenica a placename overnight known to all, like weightier, more iconic, older names such as Hiroshima and Saigon.. There's other surreal anachronism than Ukraine going on – history not repeating itself, but echoing or rhyming, the also all too fuzzy plight of the Uyghurs an uneasy reminiscence of European Jewry's anno WWII. And they weren't even poisoning the wells of the superior 🇨🇳 Han 🇹🇼 Chinese – as well they should have.
26/8 addendum: I realised for me these last few months were a bit of an unwitting grief trip. I cba rn to read up on the Kübler-Ross model – its scientific value or lack of it be damned – to see if I may have missed, skipped, overdone, or neglected a stage.
E vedeva le punture degli spilli
La barba divelta
E la faccia brutta di sputo e di sangue
E guardando e piangendo non si potea saziare..
I'd like to continue losing myself more thoroughly in these utterly unfinished web pages written in an impulse. It all severely lacks in intent, content, structure, and conciseness. Also style. The need for doing is pressing, since the time of doing is short. Sadly right now there are other, more pressing matters need get done first.
To stay informed about collapse, you could of course spend time on Reddit like over 500K other people now, or subscribe to Last Week in Collapse. It reads a bit like the above, except it is an ev-e-ry-weekly and concise tour de force, much heavier on substance than chatter. Its latest issue as of 23/7/23 reminds us ten overvloede that collapse comes from a convergence of many factors. “Imagine the supply breakdown from Covid, plus drug shortages, blackouts, droughts, plus inflation, guerilla warfare, overlapping contagious pandemics, mental health crises, random violence, and financial uncertainty.” The apocalypse bingo card comes to mind. Anyone had flesh-eating bacteria thriving in plastic on theirs?
The aforementioned Four Horsethemes, too, keep emerging from the comforting blurring fog before 👁️ the mind's eye.. They could be explored in great depth, serve as a framework for unwritten books, and well-contented websites with structure and style. The mind wanders, muses a bit about an intricate, elaborate Venn diagram of sorts to serve as a TOC, created drunk as a skunk or tight as a tick with a Spirograph for accuracy.